Picture this: a world where tweaking your designs doesn't mean endless exporting to external apps, only to reimport them later—that's the revolutionary leap Figma just took with their latest AI-driven updates!
But here's where it gets exciting: on December 10, 2025, at 6:00 AM PST, the popular design platform Figma (accessible at https://www.figma.com/) rolled out cutting-edge AI-enhanced image editing capabilities. These innovations let users effortlessly remove and isolate objects from images, plus extend those visuals seamlessly. No more juggling between different software—that's a huge win for designers who want to keep their workflow smooth and efficient.
Let's break this down simply: while AI generation tools, like the intriguing Nano Banana model, excel at whipping up brand-new images from scratch, they often fall short when it comes to precise, hands-on editing. Users crave intuitive tools that don't rely solely on text commands for every tweak. That's why Figma's enhancements are such a breath of fresh air. They've supercharged their lasso tool—think of it as a digital selection lasso, like drawing a circle around something with your mouse or stylus—to make object manipulation a breeze. Now, you can lasso an object, zap it away entirely, or isolate it to reposition freely. And the magic? When you move that object, the rest of the image stays true to its essence, preserving details like the background hues and overall color scheme. It's like having a smart assistant that understands context without you spelling it out.
For beginners dipping their toes into design, imagine you have a photo of a busy street scene, and you want to remove a distracting car. With this new tool, you could select just the car, eliminate it, and the pavement, buildings, and sky blend flawlessly, as if the car was never there. Even better, you can tweak isolated elements—adjust the lighting to make something brighter, soften shadows, shift colors, or sharpen focus, turning good designs into great ones without leaving Figma.
And this is the part most people miss: Figma isn't stopping there. They're introducing an image expansion feature that's incredibly practical for real-world scenarios. Say you're adapting a square 1x1 image into a wide web banner or a tall mobile banner—you can now fill in the extra space with intelligently generated background or details, avoiding the tedious cycle of cropping and repositioning elements. It's like stretching a canvas and letting AI paint in the blanks to fit your format perfectly. This could save hours for marketers creating ads or social media graphics, where precise sizing is everything.
To top it off, Figma has streamlined access by gathering all these image editing powers into a single, user-friendly toolbar. From selecting parts of images to swapping background colors or adding annotations and text, it's all right there. They highlighted that background removal is one of the most frequent tasks on their platform, so they've given it prime real estate on this toolbar for quick grabs.
Now, here's where it gets controversial: competitors like Adobe (as seen in their 2022 update for easier object selection in Photoshop and Lightroom at https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/18/adobe-makes-selecting-and-deleting-objects-and-people-in-photoshop-and-lightroom-a-lot-easier/) and Canva (with their 2023 AI suite at https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/22/canva-new-features-including-suite-of-ai-powered-tools/) have been offering similar object removal for years. Is Figma just playing catch-up, or is their integrated approach within a collaborative design tool a smarter evolution? Some might argue it's about time, while others could see it as Figma leveling the playing field in a crowded market. What do you think—does late adoption diminish innovation, or is timing everything in tech?
These features are currently live on Figma Design and Draw, with the company planning to roll them out across their entire suite next year. Interestingly, this launch coincides with Adobe unveiling some of their own tools inside ChatGPT (detailed at https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/10/adobe-brings-photoshop-express-and-acrobat-features-to-chatgpt/). Figma was actually an early partner with ChatGPT back in October, embedding it into their app. But it's unclear yet whether Figma's new edits will extend to users working within OpenAI's ecosystem—could this spark a new rivalry in AI integrations?
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Ivan, our go-to expert on global consumer tech at TechCrunch, brings this story from India. With a background at outlets like Huffington Post and The Next Web, he knows the tech scene inside out.
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So, fellow designers and tech enthusiasts, does this shift how you approach image editing? Should AI tools like these be standard in every creative app, or do they risk oversimplifying artistry? Is Figma finally on par with the giants, or is there something more to their strategy? Drop your opinions in the comments—let's discuss!
